CUSTOMER FEEDBACK QUESTIONNAIRE : THE KEY TO CUSTOMER LOYALTY

To survive in the times of recession and otherwise to survive competition in the next decade, it becomes imperative for hotels to provide quality service to their customers. The most important function for a hotel is to align its internal operations with the customers’ needs and expectations. Listening to customers and understanding their needs is critical to building a successful business solution. Measure of customer satisfaction and service quality ,however becomes difficult because all customers have different perception of what constitutes a “good quality service".
The most important tool to know what customers really think about your services and what you ought to offer them as a part of their service quality parameter is by obtaining customer feedback for your services. The way you design your feedback form decides the importance and relevance of the information gathered from customers that could be used to move up the value chain.
It is not just enough to gather feedback, it is equally important to analyze the same and take up a suitable course of action based upon the findings. The questionnaire must include an option where the customer can include attributes important to him and rate hotel services on those attributes. The hotels can provide complementary gifts to customers filling the feedback form.
The forms must include open ended questions as well and provide plenty of space for comments so that customer is free to express his views and is not just restricted to options available in the form. The food parameter must not be restricted to just quality and taste as attributes. It is also necessary to ask the customers to rate their satisfaction level with respect to the portion size, menu variety and value for money and provide suggestions if any.
There must be an option to gather quantitative data from the customer so that it can be analyzed properly. For example a customer dissatisfied with the price of food must have an option to mention the price he is willing to pay for that service.Also, the customers must be informed of any changes that have been implemented by the hotel based upon their feedback and suggestions.